Study of melanin localization in the mature male Calopteryx haemorrhoidalis damselfly wings.

Damselflies Calopteryx haemorrhoidalis exhibiting black wings are found in the western Mediterranean, Algeria, France, Italy, Spain and Monaco. Wing pigmentation is caused by the presence of melanin, which is involved in physiological processes including defence reactions, wound healing and sclerotization of the insect. Despite the important physiological roles of melanin, the presence and colour variation among males and females of the C. haemorrhoidalis species and the localization of the pigment within the wing membrane remain poorly understood. In this study, infrared (IR) microspectroscopy, coupled with the highly collimated synchrotron IR beam, was employed in order to identify the distribution of the pigments in the wings at a high spatial resolution. It was found that the melanin is localized in the procuticle of the C. haemorrhoidalis damselfly wings, distributed homogeneously within this layer, and not associated with the lipids of the epicuticle.

The susceptibility of Staphylococcus aureus CIP 65.8 and Pseudomonas aeruginosa ATCC 9721 cells to the bactericidal action of nanostructured Calopteryx haemorrhoidalis damselfly wing surfaces.

Nanostructured insect wing surfaces have been reported to possess the ability to resist bacterial colonization through the mechanical rupture of bacterial cells coming into contact with the surface. In this work, the susceptibility of physiologically young, mature and old Staphylococcus aureus CIP 65.8 and Pseudomonas aeruginosa ATCC 9721 bacterial cells, to the action of the bactericidal nano-pattern of damselfly Calopteryx haemorrhoidalis wing surfaces, was investigated. The results were obtained using several surface characterization techniques including optical profilometry, scanning electron microscopy, synchrotron-sourced Fourier transform infrared microspectroscopy, water contact angle measurements and antibacterial assays. The data indicated that the attachment propensity of physiologically young S. aureus CIP 65.8T and mature P. aeruginosa ATCC 9721 bacterial cells was greater than that of the cells at other stages of growth. Both the S. aureus CIP 65.8T and P. aeruginosa ATCC 9721 cells, grown at the early (1 h) and late stationary phase (24 h), were found to be most susceptible to the action of the wings, with up to 89.7 and 61.3% as well as 97.9 and 97.1% dead cells resulting from contact with the wing surface, respectively.

Antifungal versus antibacterial defence of insect wings.

HYPOTHESIS: The ability exhibited by insect wings to resist microbial infestation is a unique feature developed over 400 million years of evolution in response to lifestyle and environmental pressures. The self-cleaning and antimicrobial properties of insect wings may be attributed to the unique combination of nanoscale structures found on the wing surface. EXPERIMENTS: In this study, we characterised the wetting characteristics of superhydrophobic damselfly Calopteryx haemorrhoidalis wings. We revealed the details of air entrapment at the micro- and nano scales on damselfly wing surfaces using a combination of spectroscopic and electron microscopic techniques. Cryo-focused-ion-beam scanning electron microscopy was used to directly observe fungal spores and conidia that were unable to cross the air-liquid interface. By contrast, bacterial cells were able to cross the air-water interface to be ruptured upon attachment to the nanopillar surface. The robustness of the air entrapment, and thus the wing antifungal behaviour, was demonstrated after 1-week of water immersion. A newly developed wetting model confirmed the strict Cassie-Baxter wetting regime when damselfly wings are immersed in water. FINDINGS: We provide evidence that the surface nanopillar topography serves to resist both fungal and bacterial attachment via a dual action: repulsion of fungal conidia while simultaneously killing bacterial cells upon direct contact. These findings will play an important role in guiding the fabrication of biomimetic, anti-fouling surfaces that exhibit both bactericidal and anti-fungal properties.

Structure and Chemical Organization in Damselfly Calopteryx haemorrhoidalis Wings: A Spatially Resolved FTIR and XRF Analysis with Synchrotron Radiation.

Insects represent the majority of known animal species and exploit a variety of fascinating nanotechnological concepts. We investigated the wings of the damselfly Calopteryx haemorrhoidalis, whose males have dark pigmented wings and females have slightly pigmented wings. We used scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and nanoscale synchrotron X-ray fluorescence (XRF) microscopy analysis for characterizing the nanostructure and the elemental distribution of the wings, respectively. The spatially resolved distribution of the organic constituents was examined by synchrotron Fourier transform infrared (s-FTIR) microspectroscopy and subsequently analyzed using hierarchical cluster analysis. The chemical distribution across the wing was rather uniform with no evidence of melanin in female wings, but with a high content of melanin in male wings. Our data revealed a fiber-like structure of the hairs and confirmed the presence of voids close to its base connecting the hairs to the damselfly wings. Within these voids, all detected elements were found to be locally depleted. Structure and elemental contents varied between wing membranes, hairs and veins. The elemental distribution across the membrane was rather uniform, with higher Ca, Cu and Zn levels in the male damselfly wing membranes.

Pillars of Life: Is There a Relationship between Lifestyle Factors and the Surface Characteristics of Dragonfly Wings?

Dragonfly wings are of great interest to researchers investigating biomimetic designs for antiwetting and antibacterial surfaces. The waxy epicuticular layer on the membrane of dragonfly wings possesses a unique surface nanoarchitecture that consists of irregular arrays of nanoscale pillars. This architecture confers superhydrophobic, self-cleaning, antiwetting, and antibiofouling behaviors. There is some evidence available that suggests that lifestyle factors may have influenced the evolution of the wing nanostructures and, therefore, the resulting properties of the wings; however, it appears that no systematic studies have been performed that have compared the wing surface features across a range of dragonfly species. Here, we provided a comparison of relevant wing surface characteristics, including chemical composition, wettability, and nanoarchitecture, of seven species of dragonfly from three families including Libellulidae, Aeshnidae, and Gomphidae. The characteristic nanopillar arrays were found to be present, and the chemical composition and the resultant wing surface superhydrophobicity were found to be well-conserved across all of the species studied. However, subtle differences were observed between the height, width, and density of nanofeatures and water droplet bouncing behavior on the wing surfaces. The results of this research will contribute to an understanding of the physical and chemical surface features that are optimal for the design of antiwetting and antibacterial surfaces.

Dataset of herbarium specimens of threatened vascular plants in Catalonia.

This data paper describes a specimens' dataset of the Catalonian threatened vascular plants conserved in five public Catalonian herbaria (BC, BCN, HGI, HBIL and MTTE). Catalonia is an administrative region of Spain that includes large autochthon plants diversity and 199 taxa with IUCN threatened categories (EX, EW, RE, CR, EN and VU). This dataset includes 1,618 records collected from 17th century to nowadays. For each specimen, the species name, locality indication, collection date, collector, ecology and revision label are recorded. More than 94% of the taxa are represented in the herbaria, which evidence the paper of the botanical collections as an essential source of occurrence data.

[Increased benzodiazepine use in elderly women attending urban primary health care centers]. / Elevado consumo de benzodiacepinas en mujeres ancianas asignadas a centros de salud urbanos de atención primaria.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the overall prevalence of the chronic use of benzodiazepines and similar drugs in primary care. DESIGN: Observational, cross-sectional study. SETTING: Healthcare centres of the Reus-Altebrat Primary Care Service, Tarragona, Spain. PARTICIPANTS: Patients older than 15 years, on prolonged treatment with benzodiazepines or similar drugs. MEASUREMENTS: The variables studied were age, sex, type of healthcare centre (rural or urban), benzodiazepine, or similar drug administered and duration of treatment. RESULTS. There were 6885 patients who were on prolonged benzodiazepine or similar drug treatment, of which 70.9% were female, 73.4% were 65 years or older, and 73% attended an urban centre. The overall prevalence was 6.9%, and was higher among women than men (9.7% and 4%, respectively), and increased with age up to 27.3% among patients of 75 years or more. The stratified results showed that chronic consumption was higher among women 75 years of age or older attached to urban healthcare centres, with a prevalence of 35.7%. CONCLUSIONS: A high percentage of our population, which includes the most fragile patients, use benzodiazepines or a similar drug in a way that is not consistent with the recommendations of clinical practice guidelines.